As a regular cover-to-cover reader of your magazine I wonder whether the "ugly racism and power politics” ("Outmarried Parsis,” Readers’ Forum, Parsiana, June 21-July 6, 2019) arises, unconsciously, from a growing deep-rooted insecurity that propels many well-educated Parsis to intolerance, ignorance and bigotry?
I am 82, and at a much younger age, as a schoolboy, college student and corporate employee, rarely encountered the sort of close-minded prejudices that now infect our community! Could the reason be growing insecurity as our numbers diminish? In nature, endangered species learn to adapt to the eco-system and climate change via biodiversity. Is there a lesson in this for us?
NAWSHIR D. KHURODY
ndkhurody@gmail.com
The editors reply:
Racism and sexism are endemic in large segments of the community, as in the country. As Justice Frank Beaman so famously observed in the Petit vs Jeejeebhoy judgment of 1908: "They will admit all the illegitimate children of Parsi parents, begotten of prostitutes or kept-mistresses but they will not admit the noblest, most exemplary foreigner. Why? Because a foreigner is outside the caste, and caste is an institution into which you must be born. Of the modern Parsi they say emphatically nasautur non fit (born, not made). This is not religion, it has nothing to do with religion: it is essentially distinctly irreligious; but it is pure unadulterated Oriental caste.” It’s because of social media that these sentiments are now more visible and propagated.